Barack Obama 2008: Abraham Lincoln plus Martin Luther King Jr. times FDR. Barack Obama 2012: Larry David.
Obama’s voting blocs have been telling pollsters they’ve curbed their enthusiasm. Prowl into the polling weeds and you’ll notice that across the spectrum, core supporters — blacks, Latinos and young people — are less likely to show up for their idol than they were in 2008.
This follows direct orders to temper expectations from on high: “Four years ago, I said that I’m not a perfect man and I wouldn’t be a perfect president. And that’s probably a promise that Governor Romney thinks I’ve kept,” the Formerly Potentially Great One said in debate two weeks ago. (No one could remember Obama promising imperfection four years ago, but as recently as last December he boasted to “60 Minutes” that his first-term achievements bested any other president’s, “with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR and Lincoln,” before he remembered the economy was in the toilet and started to back away from the smell).
Obama’s most dependable supporters aren’t necessarily running the other way, but a lot of them are going to be staying home on Nov. 6. Romney’s voters, on the other hand, are prepared to stampede to the polling booths. With polls in many swing states neck-and-neck, turnout will be the deciding factor.
Some 72% of voters in the 18-29 group said they would definitely vote in 2008, according to Pew Research. This year that figure is at 63%. Even that stat is misleadingly high. Only 52% of registered voters under 30 actually showed up at the polls four years ago.
The percentage of this cohort who have even bothered to register to vote this time stands at 50%, down from 61%. Moreover, though Obama is winning the young (in opinion polls) by a margin of 57% to 35%, that is a decline from 2008, when he nabbed two-thirds of the juniors.
Obama is a victim of his own statist reality. To campaign is poetry, to govern is prose, but the story Obama is writing is a Stephen King chiller, and voters can only convince themselves it’s a fairy tale for so long.
Look at the Latino vote, which is looking at least as pro-Obama as it was in 2008, when he captured 65% of this group’s support. In part because Mitt Romney has done much less to promote amnesty for illegal aliens than John McCain or George W. Bush, some polls have him bottoming out, with Obama hitting 70% of Latinos this time. And the size of the Latino vote has exploded from 19.5 million eligible to 24 million since 2008.
But Latinos are about as motivated to vote as those post-college slackers. Only 59% say they will definitely vote, way down from 77% in 2008. Pollsters think their actual turnout may be as low as 40%. In 2008, a record 50% of Latinos voted.
Also that year, 65% of eligible black Americans voted, a historic figure and just behind whites at 66%. But if turnout softens to 2004 levels, that would mean 60% show up. In North Carolina, 2008 black turnout was an extraordinary 76%, in a state Obama carried by just 14,000 votes. That feat is unlikely to be repeated. Black-family incomes have dropped 11% in the last three years, twice as far as for white families. The poverty rate among blacks has worsened in the Obama years, too, from 26% to 28%.
William Darity, an African-American studies professor at Duke University in North Carolina, told “PBS NewsHour,” “We’re approaching the kinds of unemployment rates that existed in the United States at the height of the Great Depression in the African-American community in North Carolina.”
Even a small drop in black turnout threatens to flip that state, Virginia and/or Ohio.
Now look at Romney’s voters. Some 82% of whites (who back Romney by about 15 points) say they’re fired up about this election. Remember when a Mormon (and then a Mormon plus a Catholic, Paul Ryan) was supposedly going to have problems attracting white evangelicals? It isn’t happening. This group in 2008 comprised 26% of the electorate — including 30% in Ohio, 24% in Florida, 28% in Virginia, 31% in Iowa and 44% in North Carolina, all states which backed Obama in 2008 — and its level of enthusiasm has ticked up a couple of points compared to 2008, when it was 80%.
Seniors say they’re slightly more likely to vote than in 2008, and they’re backing Romney by 10 points. Among the 65-and-over crowd, 87% are registered, a figure that is unchanged in the last four years, but 91% of seniors say they definitely plan to vote.
Among Obama supporters, 73% are extremely likely to vote, according to the Battleground Tracking Poll. Among Romney fans, that figure is at 86%. Slightly rephrase the question to ask about party instead of personal allegiance, and the percentage of Republicans who are extremely likely to turn up on Nov. 6 beats the Democrats’ number by 8.
In stark contrast with the efforts of Maureen Dowd to create a “No Drama Obama” meme, the president is among the most polarizing figures imaginable. This month’s Battleground survey found that strong approval of him runs at 38% — but strong disapproval at 43%. And this was in a poll in which Democratic voters topped Republicans by eight percent.
There is some good news for the president, however. Professionals in the porn industry back Obama by a margin of 68 to 13, according to an informal survey by a social-network site. So with the “Boogie Nights” crowd sewed up, let’s go ahead and give Obama the state of California.
But if the national race looks like a toss-up, it probably isn’t. Romney — that supposedly bloodless, tin-eared businessman, the guy born in a necktie with a stock ticker where his heart should be — gets the excitement edge.
It’s the other guy, our supposed President Cool, whose voters have turned lukewarm.